Anyone here an expert in cheap filament?

3D Printing
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1

Anyone here an expert in cheap filament?

I recently bought some real cheap filament to see just how bad it really is and I’ve got it mostly working OK at this point.

I do get some stringing from time to time, which I chalked up to mild over-extrusion although the diameter of the filament ranges from ~1.62 - ~1.68 so that shouldn’t be the case with my settings. I’ve tried raising my retraction, from 0.8 to 1.2, and that may have helped a bit but it still seems to happen.

Could it be extruder tension?

2

Stringing could be caused by printing too hot. You could try dropping the extrusion temp in 5C increments until the stringing is acceptable or it causes another issue.

3

Knew I forgot to mention something, I started doing that. I went down to 180 and then it struggled to print the first layer, seemed silly to try and do a whole print right on the edge like that.

4

You can print the first layer at one temp and the following layers at a lower temp

5

@Camerin_hahn You don’t think it’ll be a problem on subsequent layers if it struggles at that temp on the first?

6

Cheap filament means partial jamming to full jamming. The higher temp can help with that. Cleaning the hotend is annoying and would need to be done more with cheap filament, but it can also help with the jamming.
I once planned to use cheap filament for infill and better filament for shells.

7

@jinx_OI I have an E3D V6, so yes I think that’s all metal

8

@Jackson_C 200C then " sure it in the manual somewhere :P" 190 should be the lowest and that still would depend on the quality of the fila… you still got room to increase the retraction to 2mm,
what type of extruder you using , can it reach 100mm/s without stripping to much fila?.
you tuned the PID setting?
then send it back1.62 is of the mark, pic of a hollow cube be nice, let us all see.

9

cheap filament has got better to the point that the diameter is quiet consistent. the only problem with cheap pla is that there is some kind of plasticizer added to the pla that makes it more flexible and it tends to string much more. also the pla doesn’t seem to be completely pla but a blend of a other plastics. Pure pla is quiet brittle.